Recent content by Ray Bell

I bought a parts washer this week... On the eve of doing a Subaru engine rebuild, I feel it will make doing a better job a bit easier. Promise of easier cleaning. Supercheap Auto offer to match price with identical items, three other retailers had the same thing (I checked the pics online)...

A brief comment about the earthquake... Back in 1989 I was working in an office in Blaxland, not far from you. I was on the phone, so I had the phone to my hear and was holding it with my arm having the elbow taking the weight of my head on the desk. The Newcastle earthquake hit, 5.4 on the...

Those caves are something altogether new to me... My parents owned a motel at Cudal for some time and later lived in Orange for several years and they never mentioned them, therefore probably never heard of them. It all looks pretty attractive to me, but you can bet they'll put up fences and...

The last pic shows a Mazda RX3 (Savannah in some other markets, I think) ahead of a Torana (probably LH) hatchback with the A9X flares. Driving back through Camden and Silverdale (Cobbity, Werombi road, I assume, onto the Old Blaxland Crossing Road) would have been fun. I still like driving...

I've been helping a friend over the past few days as he worked on his Clubman racing sports car... One thing he's done to reduce the difficulty of working on this very low vehicle his to set up trestles... Mobile trestles. These effectively raise the car by about 14", reducing the bending...

Here's the link to that thread: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/threads/vise-repair-101-all-vise-repairs-lubricants-sources-for-parts-and-the-tricks-to-fix.252830/

This was something which came upon me because I just couldn't resist it. I don't recall now where I got the wrench, but one handle was missing, the one which screws in and out to enable fitment and to hold the taps in place. It was a P & N brand, which used to be a good brand in Australia. The...

And seven months later I finally get around to showing the finished product! I found that, principally because I wanted a bit more thread travel and more purchase on the end I've turned down, I needed to add to the available metal in the pieces which hook into the block and bellhousing. Even...

I guessed that was the case, Hewey... More and more 'historical' societies are doing things like this, poorly researching their 'facts' and so on. I was in the Gulgong Museum the other day and saw plenty of examples of both that and spelling errors in descriptions. All the same, it might have...

I don't know so much about that pithy little tunnel being the only one from one side of the Great Dividing Range to the other... Near Murrurundi there's a tunnel which goes through the Liverpool Range, which I think is part of the GDR. And there are others which aren't railway tunnels. Check...

Hewey, you mention a '38 Ford... A few years ago (like maybe seven or eight) I bought a front and rear axle and their attendant springs, torque tube and tail shaft for a '38 or '39 Ford from someone in the Blue Mountains. Stuffed them into my Camry and took them home to Queensland. The owner of...

It shows how parochial the news can be... I hadn't heard. But then I don't always hear all the newscasts. But a lot of them I do. Where I live, just over the border in Queensland, there is virtually nothing reported about things in Tenterfield, just 18kms South of that border. Crazy, the...

Gregor, what a good idea to have Lara help you in the workshop! As you say, it will help her feel useful. Probably it will also help stave off the worst of the dementia for a time. I also am looking at getting a bicycle, though I've got a basic dislike for mountain bikes. A mere road bike...

Mike, there wasn't much difference between the '35 and '36 Ford... The 'style lines' on the body were the same, it was essentially the different grille which made the '36 what people call today 'iconic'. Overall the style was so well thought of that the post-war full-size British Ford, the...

Checking pics, it's a '45 Chev.